Bearded Man

        Here's another German Expressionist: Erich Heckel.  I'm not always a big fan of German Expressionism in general, but they were a group doing lots of experimentation with woodcuts and they were important in bringing the woodcut to respect as an artistic medium (as opposed to the view that it was merely an old-fashioned method for reproducing images cheaply.)  And here and there I find pieces that please me, like this portrait of a bearded man by Heckel.

        I like the use of the border to crop the edges slightly.  I like how the roughness of the carving translates to texture on the skin.  I like the simplicity of the image: not much detail, but every detail that's necessary.

[Picture: Bärtiger Mann, woodcut by Erich Heckel, 1908 (image from Rex Irwin Art Dealer).]